On Tuesday of last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for Michigan's environmental agency to create water standards for specific toxic chemicals instead of waiting for the EPA's federal guidelines. Michigan is exercising its state's rights and tackling the PFAS issue directly. Whitmer wants to lead the nation against PFAS, but wants to do it backed by science and facts. Currently, the EPA's health advisory, emphasis on advisory, threshold is 70 parts per trillion.

This article talks about solutions to decreasing jobs for blue-collar workers, specifically coal workers. The article is a dialogue between PBS news correspondant, Hari Sreenivasan and struggling coal workers from the Appalachian state of West Virginia. West Virigina, as the article says, "put all its eggs in one basket" with coal mining.

Winters, especially in the state of Michigan, has always made it a lot tougher for people to get out and do things. The more and more snow there is on the streets, the more dangerous it is to leave your house. This article on the Michigan Daily discusses how the conditions of the walkways and lack of maintenance being done has made it even harder to get out during the winter.

Recently, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for a state-wide standard in water-quality. As stated in this article, Whitmer does not want to wait for the federal government to come out with a nation-wide standard.

Just yesterday, the New York Times released this article which details how the PG&E electrical company has been responsible for several wildfires in the recent years, including the "Campfire" which devestated the town of Paradise, CA and stands as the dealiest wildfire in California history. The article does a great job in showing PG&E's negligence when it came to the maintenance of its equiptment

The prospect of simply abandoning your pet to the harsh elements probably horrifies most of us (hopefully all), but it happens more often than we think. I would see a stray cat every once in a while but never thought much of it until one cat near where I live started asking for attention and was getting skinnier over time. But it wasn't until there was a lot of news warning students about staying warm in the polar vortex that I wondered how abandoned animals would survive alone.

Should it be mandatory to include in food labels if the product was genetically modified? With the genetic modification of food becoming more and more common, and even a conventional form of farming, there is a lot of debate around whether or not it should be mandatory to let customers know that their food was indeed modified. This article speaks on the side of customers who believe that they have the right to know what they are eating. The other side of the argument is that there is no need for federally mandated GMO labeling.

The article I am going to share with you discusses the air quality here in Michigan. Prior to reading this article I had hoped Michigan would be in the top or middle of the list of Metropolitan areas; I have now learned that this is not the case at all and we constantly have one of the worst air quality levels out of all the areas. A new air quality report was taken for 2018 and has shown that the air quality has immensely decreased since the 2014-2016 reports. This is extremely concerning considering we live here for a large majority of the school year.

The rapid increase of plastic production over the last century is, without doubt, one of the leading causes of the immense pollution around the world today. The Wall Street Journal released an article that I find extremely valuable and interesting as it discusses various "top household brands" and their recent takes on ameliorating this problem. The reading reveals that between the wealthy nations importing plastic and the wealthy companies producing it, both are either limiting intake or modifying the means of packaging respectively.

On Tuesday of last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for Michigan's environmental agency to create water standards for specific toxic chemicals instead of waiting for the EPA's federal guidelines. Michigan is exercising its state's rights and tackling the PFAS issue directly. Whitmer wants to lead the nation against PFAS, but wants to do it backed by science and facts. Currently, the EPA's health advisory, emphasis on advisory, threshold is 70 parts per trillion.

This article talks about solutions to decreasing jobs for blue-collar workers, specifically coal workers. The article is a dialogue between PBS news correspondant, Hari Sreenivasan and struggling coal workers from the Appalachian state of West Virginia. West Virigina, as the article says, "put all its eggs in one basket" with coal mining.

Winters, especially in the state of Michigan, has always made it a lot tougher for people to get out and do things. The more and more snow there is on the streets, the more dangerous it is to leave your house. This article on the Michigan Daily discusses how the conditions of the walkways and lack of maintenance being done has made it even harder to get out during the winter.

Recently, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for a state-wide standard in water-quality. As stated in this article, Whitmer does not want to wait for the federal government to come out with a nation-wide standard.

Just yesterday, the New York Times released this article which details how the PG&E electrical company has been responsible for several wildfires in the recent years, including the "Campfire" which devestated the town of Paradise, CA and stands as the dealiest wildfire in California history. The article does a great job in showing PG&E's negligence when it came to the maintenance of its equiptment

The prospect of simply abandoning your pet to the harsh elements probably horrifies most of us (hopefully all), but it happens more often than we think. I would see a stray cat every once in a while but never thought much of it until one cat near where I live started asking for attention and was getting skinnier over time. But it wasn't until there was a lot of news warning students about staying warm in the polar vortex that I wondered how abandoned animals would survive alone.

Should it be mandatory to include in food labels if the product was genetically modified? With the genetic modification of food becoming more and more common, and even a conventional form of farming, there is a lot of debate around whether or not it should be mandatory to let customers know that their food was indeed modified. This article speaks on the side of customers who believe that they have the right to know what they are eating. The other side of the argument is that there is no need for federally mandated GMO labeling.

The article I am going to share with you discusses the air quality here in Michigan. Prior to reading this article I had hoped Michigan would be in the top or middle of the list of Metropolitan areas; I have now learned that this is not the case at all and we constantly have one of the worst air quality levels out of all the areas. A new air quality report was taken for 2018 and has shown that the air quality has immensely decreased since the 2014-2016 reports. This is extremely concerning considering we live here for a large majority of the school year.

The rapid increase of plastic production over the last century is, without doubt, one of the leading causes of the immense pollution around the world today. The Wall Street Journal released an article that I find extremely valuable and interesting as it discusses various "top household brands" and their recent takes on ameliorating this problem. The reading reveals that between the wealthy nations importing plastic and the wealthy companies producing it, both are either limiting intake or modifying the means of packaging respectively.